On Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, Gary Orfield and the Harvard Civil Rights Project released a study concluding--just like last year's report, and the one the year before that--that school segregation is on the rise. According to the authors, their 'new' work "shows that U.S. schools are becoming more segregated in all regions for both African American and Latino students. We are celebrating a victory over segregation at a time when schools across the nation are becoming increasingly segregated." According to the report, Kentucky leads the nation as the most integrated state for black students, and Wyoming leads the nation as the most integrated state for Latinos. The report does not, however, detail student achievement levels in either state, nor does it give any indication of whether integration has increased pupil achievement overall in those states. In fact, in their discussion of the academic implications of racial segregation, the authors acknowledge that socioeconomic status, not race per se, "turns out to be powerfully related to both school opportunities and achievement levels." One would have hoped that the authors would see this link as evidence that relegating low-income and minority students to persistently failing inner-city schools is the real problem. Sadly, they do not recommend the one reform that could give the greatest number of low-income minorities the power to escape segregated inner-city schools: unlimited school choice. Rather, they're only interested in giving minorities only limited choices, and only if those choices further racial desegregation. You could look the report up at http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/reseg04/resegregation04.php, or you could wait 'til next year's edition, which will undoubtedly say exactly the same thing.
"U.S. school segregation now at '69 level," by Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, January 18, 2004